ou must see Typee to realize what people mean to a
place.

"The _nonos_ were simply hell, but as I had lived a good many years
in Tai-o-hae I was hardened to them. The old man slapped at them
occasionally, but made no complaint. He hardly seemed to feel them,
or to realize what their numbers meant. It was when we pushed up the
trail through the valley, and he saw only deserted _paepaes_, that
he began to look frightened.

"'Are they all gone?' he inquired weakly.

"'No,' I said, 'there are fifteen or twenty here.' We came to a
clearing and there found the remnant of the Typees. I questioned them,
but none had ever heard of him. There had been many Manus,--the word
means bird,--but as they were the last of the tribe, she must have
been dead before they were born, and they no longer kept in their
memories the names of the dead, since there were so many, and all
would be dead soon.

"The American still understood enough Marquesan to understand their
answers, and taking me by the arm he left the horses and led me up
the valley till he came to a spot where there were fragments of an
old _paepae_, buried in vines and torn apart by their roots.

"'We lived here,' he said, and then he sat on the forsaken stones
and cried. He said that they had had two children, and he had been
sure that at least he would find them alive. His misery made me feel
bad, and the damned _nonos_, too, and I cried--I don't know how damn
sentimental it was, but that was the way it affected me. The old
chap seemed so alone in the world.

"'It is three miles from here to the beach,' he said, 'and I have
seen men coming with their presents for the chief, walking a yard
apart, and yet the line stretched all the way to the beach.'

"He could hardly ride back to Tai-o-hae, and he departed with the
_Tropic Bird_ without saying another word to any one."

Typee, they told me, was half way to Atiheu and a good four miles by
horse. The road had been good when the people were many, and was
still the main road of the island, leading through the Valley of
Hapaa. My steed was borrowed of T'yonny Howard, who, though he owned
a valley, poured cement for day's wages.

"What I do?" he asked, as if I held the answer. "Nobody to help me
work there. I cannot make copra alone. Even here they bring men from
other place do work. Marquesan die too fast."

If T'yonny revered his father's countrymen, his horse did not. These
island horses are unhappy-looking skates, t